Beliveau Review Issue 7

Beliveau Review

Also available from Beliveau Books

Synaeresis: arts + poetry (12 issues)
The Best of Afterthoughts 1994-2000
Dénouement: a poetry anthology

Beliveau Review

Vol. 2 No. 4 Issue 7

Beliveau Books
STRATFORD

Beliveau Review Vol. 2 No. 4 Issue 7
©2021 Beliveau Books

JUNE 2021 ISSUE

ISSN 2563-3619

All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in
any form, with the exception of excerpts for the purpose of literary
review, without the expressed permission of the publisher.

Published by Beliveau Books, Stratford, Ontario
Website: beliveaubooks.wixsite.com/home
Email: beliveaubooks@gmail.com

Editors: Andreas Gripp, D.G. Foley, Carrie Lee Connel
Front Cover/Back Cover photos: Andreas Gripp

Text font is Calibri 12pt.

Acknowledgement:

The territory where Beliveau Books of Stratford, Ontario, is situated is
governed by two treaties. The first is the Dish With One Spoon Wampum
Belt Covenant of 1701, made between the Anishinaabe and the
Haudenosaunee Confederacy. The second is the Huron Tract Treaty of
1827, an agreement made between eighteen Anishinaabek Chiefs and the
Canada Company. These traditional hunting and fishing lands and
waterways have for generations been shared and cared for by the
Anishinaabe, the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, the Wendat, and the
Neutrals. We are grateful for the opportunities to engage in the process of
learning how to be a better treaty partner.

CONTRIBUTOR

Carla M. Cherry
Joseph A. Farina
Kushal Poddar
Cecilia Martinez
Editor’s Review
Terry Watada
Barun Mandal
Penn Kemp

Brian J. Alvarado
Suzanne S. Rancourt
Andreas Gripp
D.G. Foley

Frank Beltrano
Rhonda Melanson

Page

10
i, 12
18
22
31
38
40
46
49
58
60
62

C Yarkn an 2aie
CECILIA MARTINEZ

Carla M. Cherry

Orison
—for Adam Toledo and Ma’Khia Bryant

| saw a black baby girl laugh today.

She cried when her mama took her off her lap.
Her mama tickled her under her chin.

Baby’s brown cheekbones rushed

to meet her North Star eyes.

| swaddled the song of her giggle.
Sheathed it in my hippocampus.

Saw a baby black girl with a knife, shot today.
Police, paramedics, cried out, What’s her name?
What’s her name? What’s her name?

Ma’ Khia. Ma’Khia.

Stay with me, stay with me, they cried

while they tried to resuscitate.

Her blood on the ground underneath her head.

Dr. Adelaide Sanford said when she taught
she would pull an angry girl aside

talk with her tell her how pretty she is
until the girl forgot why she was angry
and didn’t want to fight anymore.

An elder shared:
his papa didn’t get past the third grade

but he made everyone sit at the table
for breakfast every morning.

ul

“Now everyone makes a plate disappears to their rooms.’

Our babies need more lap time.
Tickling under their chins.

Gazes into their North Star eyes.

Let us swaddle the song of their giggles.

As we demand that police
be defunded,

that the system tear down
the blue wall of silence

we must bring back the village.
Keep our homes,
our selves together.

For those who turn to the streets
knives

gangs

guns

if there are thirteen-year-olds
like Adam

sneaking out after midnight

to run with you

Please put your hands

on their shoulders, say,

Nah, go home.

Shield your heart.

Keep your head in them books.

Ode to Harlem

| met Harlem through my father’s eyes.
Daddy, a son of 375 Edgecombe Avenue.

Harlem.

A place that fed you, mind, body, and soul,

if you were in a good building with good neighbors.
P.S. 46.

Stitt Junior High School 164.

George Washington High School.

Daddy’s favorite teacher, Mrs. Purcell, had parties
every Friday if the class was good.

Her voice, woo, was like a thunderclap.

You had your street gangs, like the Egyptian Kings or the Debs,
but if your parents kept a tight rein on you, you were OK,
and Nana and Pop-Pop kept Daddy close to the stoop.
After school, there were Boy Scouts, Cub Scouts,
Explorers, Brownies, Girl Scouts.

Minisink Townhouse.

Got around on streetcars on Amsterdam Avenue.
Double-decker buses on Broadway.

They cost ten, fifteen cents.

Ran from the Cloisters, down Fifth Avenue.

Daddy sang in the boys’ choir at St. Luke’s Episcopalian.
Baptized at Abyssinian Baptist Church.

Age 11, he carried groceries at Food Family Supermarket
on 148th and St. Nicholas,

next door to the liquor store
David Dinkins’ father-in-law used to own.

Daddy wandered the shelves of
Michaux’s African National Memorial,
and Black Liberation Bookstore.

His friend Bunky OD’d at the age of 16.

Daddy swore heroin was dumped in Harlem in the fifties

because of Adam Clayton Powell and Black people starting to control
their own destiny.

Destroy the youth, destroy the community.

| met Harlem through my father’s eyes.

We read The Amsterdam News.

Four years of Saturdays at Harlem School of the Arts—

Piano and flute for me, piano and ballet for my sister.

Black Liberation Bookstore after.

Read to Ms. Mulzac in polysyllabic breeze.

On to Better Pie Crust when we begged for cinnamon buns after.
No sticky fingers on book covers.

Took us to the Schomburg when he researched our family’s roots,
buried deep in North Carolina peanut and cotton fields.

He bought a copy of Harlem on My Mind.
To see Harlem through my father’s eyes,
5

| poured over its photos and articles until the spine splintered:
James Van Der Zee
Speakeasies
Ethel Waters
Florence Mills
Kid Chocolate
Marcus Garvey and his Black Star Line
Father Divine
Joe Louis
Rent strikes
Protests
Boycotts—Don’t buy here. Pass Them By.
James Baldwin
Percy Sutton
Castro’s visit at the Theresa Hotel.
James Powell and the riots of ‘64.
Malcolm X on the podium, lying in state.

Family dinners at 22 West on West 135th.
Copeland’s where | ordered entrees plus three sides.
As loved ones joined the Village of the Ancestors,
we held services at Benta’s Funeral Home.

College summer breaks, | returned to Harlem.
Saw it through Daddy’s eyes.
Went to Harlem Week.
Bought cassettes from The Record Shack.
6

Shopped for African garb at Mart 125.
Medallions, bracelets and
codfish cakes from the street vendors.

Like my father and mother, | was baptized at Abyssinian.

| too strolled Strivers’ Row on Sundays.

People said Good Morning.

“Buy property,” Reverend Butts said, “I’m telling you now.”

After service, coconut and vanilla cakes

from the cake and pie man on the corner of West 138th
and Adam Clayton Powell Boulevard.

As music blasted from elders selling gospel CDs,

we perused framed art that | would hang if | ever
owned a Harlem brownstone.

Though Mart 125,
The Record Shack, closed their doors
rents went up,
big box stores took over
new White neighbors
called police about loud music/laughter/domino games
and not even the perfume of the linden and sweet gum trees
could stop complaints about the drum circle in Marcus Garvey Park
that kept it safer over 40 years,
this granddaughter of Harlem is here to tell you
it still feeds the mind, body, and soul—
7

the churches where tourists line up to hear Ze Gospel Music,
City College

the Schomburg

The Apollo

Studio Museum of Harlem

Sister’s Uptown Bookstore

the people who say Good Morning on Strivers’ Row,
Londel’s

Ponty Bistro

Make My Cake

Melba’s

The Cecil Steakhouse

Uptown Juice Bar.

Here | stand.

Joseph A. Farina

red geraniums

burnt sienna apartment buildings rise above the piazza
blue shuttered windows, opened in the summer light

ledges fringed with red geraniums tended by housebound tenants
their ancestry from mountain farms and valley fields

here in their urban gardens,
reduced to single terra cotta pots

they dip their hands in the contained earth
dreaming of sowing and harvests

and the blood call of roots.

Kushal Poddar

Neutral Days

Near the northern end of our city,

we meet, often in one minute cafe

to sip bitterness liquefied, and nod at its
rather a Spartan decor, its walls' lime
mortar grouting;

the war between us sees itself on a looking glass;
the blood seems always high on a thinner

bearing steroids pushed to skirmish against

what we now cannot recall, and so our blood flows

in between like a neutral strip ripping free
from flesh too dead to remember the fight.

10

Once the Pestilence Ebbs

On the thin line

between near and far
from the city

her village shivers yearlong
in the bleary breeze

sent by the holy estuary.

People, busy with up-to-date devices,
wild honey, black magic,

wood, and fish, do not see

her returning as if she is

a wandering ghost befuddled in those
old roads, set to be startled seeing
who now lives at her household.

| offer her a glass of water,

a break to unfold her story of absence,

and hear nothing she says —

why would one disappear only to return

to someone who does not fumble an ending?

She will leave soon.

The contour trills a little.

A folk takes off from the power lines.
The music and the pitch stir the wind,
and then nothing and nothing then.

11

CECILIA MARTINEZ

12

CECILIA MARTINEZ

CECILIA MARTINEZ

14

CECILIA MARTINEZ

15

CECILIA MARTINEZ

Editor’s Review

WHALE DAY

And Other Poems

BILLY
COLLINS

New York Times bestselling author of THE RAIN IN PORTUGAL

Billy Collins

Whale Day and other poems
Random House, 2020

ISBN 978-0-399-58975-1
115 pp., Hardcover

It’s been no secret that Billy Collins has been my favourite poet for
many years now and someone I’ve declared to be the best English-
language poet of all time. While this may make a call of bias against
me reviewing his latest book plausible, I’ll plead this isn’t the case.

18

Being the best at what you do doesn’t mean you’re immune from
slipping a half-step, repeating yourself, or even failing to reach your
own standard you’ve set at a ridiculously high level. In a nutshell, yes,
this means that Whale Day isn’t quite up to the mark of The Rain In
Portugal from a few years’ back. That said, had anyone else scribed
this latest collection from Collins, I’d have little or no qualms about it
at all, which is a roundabout way of stating that Billy is basically
competing with himself.

What I’Il be sharing are the passages and instances where Whale Day
is still exceptional.

Collins is known for his gift of taking the ordinary, mundane
happenings of daily existence and showing us how profound they can
actually be—often starting slowly and transforming what we
otherwise would overlook into something glorious, almost godly.

While awaiting for the fortune cookies to arrive at the end of dinner
at Imperial Garden, Collins decides to create a light-hearted fortune
of his own: He who acts like a jerk / on an island of his own creation /
will have only the horizon for a friend. This simple commentary of
one having themself to blame for loneliness is conveyed through a
Senryu embedded within the poem and in this as well as in Collins’
earlier books, we see the influence of haiku and Eastern verse—his
use of brevity and observation condensing the language into easily
digestible bits for the reader, which translates into an accessibility for
which the author is renowned.

Again, with the theme of loneliness, Collins admits to a childhood
spent often in a solitary manner. He finds companionship in Mice,
but resists giving them names, / afraid they would all disappear / if
our house happened to burst into flames.

Despite his lonely upbringing, Collins has come to embrace travel and
interacting with people. In / Am Not Italian, his stopover in Perugia is
marked by a relatively boring beginning to the day—a tediousness
that most of us relate to but Collins is able to make it poetic:

It’s 8:40 and they are off to work,

some in offices, others sweeping the streets

while | am off to a museum or a church

to see paintings, maybe light a candle in an alcove.
Yet here we all are in our suits and work shirts
joined in the brotherhood of espresso,

or how is it said? La fratellanza dell’espresso

The preceding poem in Whale Day, The Emperor of Ice Cubes, may
best encapsulate what happens in a Billy Collins poem. At the beach,
Collins notes three shorebirds, so ordinary he’s even somewhat
unsure of their identities (“probably sandpipers”). So they’re
rummaging around the seaweed—nothing remotely spectacular
about that. What happens though takes the reader on an unexpected
twist in the road—an ice cube Collins tossed which happens to land
near them. He then changes the point of view to that of one of the
bird’s: “Did it fall from outer space?” Remind the sandpiper “of its
second home in the Arctic ... with lots of ice to peck at on arrival?”
There really is no mystery of its source—a beer cooler. Collins again
reverts back to the humdrum, albeit now transfigured:

And it all seemed framed for me,
this bigger seascape,

when | leaned back to look—
nothing but pale blue sky,

20

clouds pushed around in the wind,
and bright white waves

rolling over one another,

then breaking on the sand.

The Robert Frost-ian “Yellow Wood,” where two roads diverge, filled
with “binary choices,” laments that one can’t go down two at a time
/ and be both tailor and candlestick maker. // But you’re free to
dream of the other. / Take this poet, elbows on the sill, / imagining
my life as a baker or evena tinker ... concluding, in his usual insightful
manner, that the dictionary didn’t have the foggiest idea / what
tinkering actually demanded— / what solitude and hardship such a
life must entail!

This is as about as serious as Collins gets in Whale Day—there is no
shortage of humourous episodes that will please his long-time fans
such as myself. It may be, sorry to say, that this trough has been
visited maybe once or twice too often.

Perhaps it’s because my expectations are so high with him, that this
particular release seems like Collins has run out of fresh ideas, and if
that’s the case (which happens to nearly every writer at a certain age
and after so many books), then I’d recommend a hiatus to recharge
and then unleash his magnum opus upon the poetry world—if
indeed he hasn’t done it already and which we need to revisit if he
has with a greater sense of awe and gratitude.

—Andreas Gripp

21

Terry Watada

Haunted by the Immaterial World

Genyo-no ie,
the House of
Genyo

my mother’s house
in
Mihama, Japan,

above

a shallow
and slow-moving creek
atributary of the Mimi River,
that flows to the sea

a sea of jellyfish and whales.
the house at the top

of a long, meandering

road_ is hidden

behind

a wall of barns full of

farm machinery

and

storage bins

22

the arched
entrance leads
to a courtyard
wide

and dusty

a large estate
of shoji,

flickering lights and
polished floors and
tatami

a concrete cooking area
with wood-burning stove,
a hand pump for water
and

large ofuro
for nighttime bathing.

And at its heart is the
Genyo-no Oba

my mother’s sister-in-law,
ancient
and kind,

my aunt

her husband long gone,

23

maybe died
in the war
maybe his younger brother too,

another uncle.

| wish
| had known
them.

makes me lonely somehow.

Genyo-no Oba
cackled deep in

the estate echoes of

madness.

But my aunts were alive,
when | visited back
in ‘59:

Hikosuke, ancient as well
and stern;

Jo-mon,
serious no-nonsense,
her name sounded like
“German” to me.

and the third whose
24

name may have been
Kamu, she

gave me Japanese candy
and kindness.

my favourite

| have a vivid
memory of the four
dressed in black kimono
standing in a line, as if in
a photograph, while
mist
surrounded them
and swallowed

them.

and there was the youngest sister,
absent from the photo,
her remains translucent
in the
mist,

a child who drowned
in the Mimi River
so

long ago

25

she walks the halls of Genyo,
|
believe.

my mother felt
her presence,
standing as she did

on warm

tatami
floors

in the middle of the
foyer to the other
rooms of the house.

She stood
shaking and crying

a pool of sorrow beneath
her vulnerable feet.

| wanted
to hold her
comfort her
console her.
| tried,
but could not.

| was only 7.

26

and there was the stone samurai
in

the garden outside
a side-room

a fierce face, his sword and
strength

protecting us
and all past generations.

somewhere water gurgled
in

the garden
bringing peace as we sat
in seiza,
so my mother taught me.

and we
visited graves in
adjacent hills

wooden staves
for markers strange lettering
told of past lives, of strangers
& relatives

incense burning constantly
the

clouds drifting like ghosts,
the scent their calling card.

27

the bousan
chanted
the sutras
in an ancient raspy voice
full of
dust & charred remains

and | was told the story
of grandpa, another | never met,
gathering his children
before him and

the stone samurai
and

telling them of
his coming death. no health
issues, no visible signs
of disease, no prediction of
accident,

just death at a precise moment
of time.

they all laughed,
I’m sure Kamu-no Obachan
was the loudest.

yet Ojiichan
did
die at the predicted
28

time and day.

strange, | have
lived
that same story
ever since.

villagers say | bear
a striking resemblance
to him.
yet | have had
no such premonition.

maybe one day

| wandered the halls
of Genyo, so many
decades ago,
the haunted halls,
of Genyo.

the darkness
surrounded
and
engulfed me,

but | felt safe.

| instead walked

29

through my ancestors’
ghostly
shroud of trans-
lucence

and cried for my mother
in

the billowing incense and
chanting of

the Heart Sutra

at
her funeral.

30

BARUN MANDAL

31

(opposite page: BARUN MANDAL) BARUN MANDAL

BARUN MANDAL

34

—!
<x
a
Zz
<x
=
Zz
=
ac
<x
[aa)

BARUN MANDAL
(opposite page: BARUN MANDAL)

Penn Kemp

For Mary and Her Men

Do you remember the storms
on Lake Geneva, the challenge
set out by poets, and answered
by you, Mary Shelley, yours

so easily equal in power and
longevity to the men’s.

It was revolutionary then to
spend a weekend dreaming
Gothic. You chewed the era
coming into focus—new but
unrealized, science in action.

Thinking monster—this idea
alive at the same time and

huge the way the past is
thrown by a trick of light
projected onto shadow

out of all proportion into

a future to be feared, unknown.

Then the thud of approaching
golem, his wet eye unable to
focus on anything as small
as you, his author, his maker—
the woman he yearned would
be his one true love, lost.

38

Spring CorresponDance

Rose-breasted grosbeaks peal
bright notes matching light.

Quartered orange on bird-food post
attracts orioles.

Purple finch peck along the bough-
blossoming redbud.

Forget-me-nots reflect the sky.
Dandelions mirror sun rays.

Striped chipmunk dappled in light.
A brush of squirrel on bare branch.

Like calls to like across
opening air.

May morning glories between
spheres, hear and here.

39

Brian J. Alvarado

Two Poems

you surprised us all with

a smuggler’s grin and the diviner’s mint—
i’m not afraid if you’re not afraid.

but in the soonest swear to

come from a shamed god

i crept inside hell for a time and

became the crease in the couch,

hunched over my own vacant body,
while those converged did the honour

of laughing for my vulgar but motionless mouth—
i’m not afraid you’re not afraid.

i swear on my brothers i wasn’t always an oaf, and
that something more than the sky blue brand pisswater
truly enlivened me to save us

the scut of a lukewarm day,

sucking and squeezing the air out of a can

like a disgustipated Popeye,

and kicking gravel off the path in

rescue of our rations, while trying too

hard not to stumble on my

stupid Selinsgrove drawl

in public on the way.

40

in another timeline, i’d have wanted

the gravel to take its sweet and timely
revenge on sinful soles as they careened
past the dumpsters, and left them for
reluctant graveyard shifts to find

when night had not fallen, yet

won and stood tall.

41

everything cries—

the collective bottlechime
scrape across jagged
plastic pavement,

the stale yelps from
curious ageless fingers
against atrophied epics,
the wiry bray of strings
stretched beyond reprise,
and the whistly suckle

on the ant farm trail beads
of melted flavored-ice tubes.

do we ever give in to listening
to the hacking of a hickory

on our way home, long
enough to hear it fall?

if the remnant chips are
three molars deep,

could anyone not have

heard them clearer?

could we be sweeter

in our killing blows

to candles swirled in
celebration and tragedy,

42

swifter still in our need
to crumple and condense
fistfuls in failure,

and more pointed in our
punctures, and the
pressurized release

in letting helium-

woven desires go?

43

Three Movements

i carelessly gloss over

the surgeon general warning

like a lazy barcode scanner

paid below minimum,

and wonder for a wandering moment
if he must think God is sober when
He comes out of the machinery—
would He traipse around long
enough otherwise, or is even a
drunken God one crooked step
ahead of us in keeping His rustle
inaudible enough for our pursuit
to submit to the trapdoor

of divine intervention, and

an absent curtain call?

in treacherous limbo,

i sought to cast lots

with my inner monologue

to see who would speak first,
but all that came out were
ties, and tongues, and flies,

44

making us both more spinny,

and frustrated at each other

and everything else.

when we realized

no one else was around anymore,
we cradled each other in the
wake of the plague we invoked,
convincing ourselves that we

had only last rites left.

our savior parted the mediterranean
white-and-red sauce platter

with life saving pita—

i did not bow to this

eucharistic delivery.

it was only upon heading away

from the propulsive adagio

for truck drone that i conceded

to what could only be accepted as

a raucous windfall of hearty laughter.
i made a break

for the nearest street grate,

in what must’ve looked to others

like an elongated genuflect.

the water i had stolen fell

silently through the grates, and

the wind whipped up a mightier holler.

45

Suzanne S. Rancourt

My Feet Still Burn

iam the dust between toes

thorns in roman soldiers’ feet

that marched upon the spring of lambs
exile on Milotopos Machos
cartwheeling the ridgeline

a Langadha wind-shear scythes

these medicine plants—their blossoms
sprawl across battle fields

the land holds millennia festered wounds
crickets the sound of windmills

still grind

46

aspis

cold silk froth laid atop the double espresso

bitter tonic—sweet rust cinnamon

Spirals its waiting

to stretch its lengthened arrow across breasted lava floes
shoot along the arete

punctuate nettles, sheep in shadows

seep easy into eager Minoan whispers

scatter sweat flies feeding on rubble

the other side of salt

47

Blue Moon SONET?

May in Greece something cycles—

the fishing trawler’s wake stirs up seagulls

| recall blue lips, blue fingernails, blue babies
blues in E flat minor—that indigo blue beam

the game camera captured a couple days in a row
streaming from heaven’s vast origins

grounding cobalt in both front and back yard

because heartache dropped anchor and as
dedication to my venous and arterial self

it lodged amongst varicose fissures
delineating mountains at sunset—

a snagged companionship unravels
silhouettes unfurl along earth’s ridgeback
my new teeth hiss wind never before heard
an iridescent sound becomes forsaken love
in a parkinsoned voice

penciled navigation and compass pricks

mars divorce maps—erasures disfigure failed flight geometrics
the split tail swallows slice

their inquisitive air eddies

whirling pinwheels—all | want to know

how many swallows

does it take to bring good luck

1 SONET: Synchronous Optical Network- communication protocol used to
transmit a large amount of data over large distances using optical fibre
allowing multiple digital data streams to be transferred simultaneously.

ANDREAS GRIPP

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ANDREAS GRIPP

50

A amee

ANDREAS GRIPP

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i) a
i) ve t
ANDREAS GRIPP

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ANDREAS GRIPP

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ANDREAS GRIPP

54

Andreas Gripp

The Paean of Mephistopheles

The view over Wittenberg is obscured. My wings are ragged and
lacking in the beauty of feathers. All who gaze upon me shun and
shame and | fly only to flee.

Mythology has its reality revoked by lack of evidence. You'll play the
skeptic with everything | question. How can you not care that 20,000
Yemeni children starve in the 2020s? The lion’s roar is mute and no
one picks up the Charleston. It’s only your lips flapping now,
cancelling out everything | say and the ones who re-tweeted,
anathema.

| never knew how exquisite your hair was until you cut it off. | would
have slipped the sweeper a twenty but it was trash-binned before |
could arrive. Give my regards to the salon. They know not what they
do.

What is ugly, anyway? Is it the absence of beauty or too much of it at

once? In the fire they’re disfigured. But then the ash that’s left at
the end is the loveliest thing we’ve ever seen.

55

Brother Dominic, why are the monks bald who bake your bread?
None have felt the touch of women and they hide all day in their
hoods. Your tunic was torn in Tunis, you left the faith but pretend to
this very hour. While the others took of the Host, you chewed on
gum instead. Beware the karma of cavity.

The manifesto you showed me was lacking in quotes. If there’s no
scripture, how do you Say it’s from God? Do you also speak from
Sinai? Is your backyard hedge aflame? And what do you feed us in
lieu of manna? Excuse me while | polish the hooves of my golden
calf.

They also churn to cheese, the milk. It’s been properly stored and
aged. If you serve with Sauvignon, I'll eat like Jean Valjean. He knows
what it is to be hunted, the stain of sin upon his breast like Nathaniel
Hawthorne’s heroine. What is the name of your phantom Javert?

56

The Word was in the Beginning. But then the fossils deemed it false.
Why is Sophocles ignored and Plato’s dialogue inerrant? Is it due to
tragedy? What would we be if we didn’t laugh? | called King Lear
comedic in a pretzel-logic way. Three daughters worked out fine for
Carol Brady. They never said she’d divorced. A widow was much
more acceptable then.

Wasn’t it the Age of Aquarius or were the hippies tripped-up
hypocrites?

Scales all turned to feathers before the dinosaurs’ days had ended.
See it for yourself, just above the iridium line. Damn that bloody
meteor!

Everything | take in is dead. And not just the animal flesh of my shoes
and on my plate when I’m a Vegan-cheat. Watch The Maltese Falcon
and tell me who’s still alive. Play Prince and Jimi and a little Lennon
too. Imagine there’s a Heaven. That Norma Jean comes back at every
itching interval.

Miles birthed the cool and he was kilometers ahead of the crowd.
When the sun swells and swallows, will what we did on the earth
matter at all? The rockets of Elon Musk are the singular hope we

hold. Let that be your final thought before you succumb to slumber.

The sheep you count are radioactive. Our spectres are known by
their scars.

D.G. Foley

Binary Blown to Bits

My father once said, Dawn
why ain’t you out there
skipping with your friends?
And of course my “friends” were
the girls in frilly tops

or halters or tanks that showed
off the first blush of breasts
and that Double Dutch

was good for a Butch

like me and that plastic
machine gun fights with

the boys would make me

a lesbo and yes, | then faked
being girly-girl and jumped to
the beat of The Go-Go’s

all the while watching Sam-
antha jump up and down

again and again while Kevin
and the boys marked me
AWOL, my body supposedly

in some trench with the vermin
biding their time before
beginning their sickening
instinct to feed.

58

Second Partner, Second Pet

Richelieu isn’t the first dog I’ve had
and he doesn’t seem to mind the
comparisons with a few years’ past.

My first partner was Terry and he under-
stood when | told him being woman wasn’t
easy for me and | couldn’t live for either
his or others’ expectations. When we had
to put Dion down, we said goodbye to

him and to us.

Emma makes me French Toast

on the morning of our anniversary,
beating me to the kitchen and post-
poning my plan of Omelettes Olé.
She uses real maple syrup from

a sugarbush in Québec.

As | savour its sweetness—and hers—
| feel—no, | know—there’ll be no

au revoir until cruel nature takes

its destined, inevitable course.

59

Frank Beltrano

Window Where a Mirror Might Be Better

With my ears
focused for long distance

| escape my windowless office

tumble clean in the washing

machine, laundry room behind me

stalk the neighbours down the hall

all are not being careful

about Covid.

After intimate

conversations, | am back to bare

walls of white, left and right

that stare down at me. | have art

to hang there, but | put it off

rather than hang it up, these things

that mean so much.

Indigenous Ecua-
dorians happily
drinking and danc-
ing in hardwood

Photo called Card
Sharks, gift from

Al Sugerman, free
To me, needs frame

Archangel Michael
Symbol of Visual

Art Week, on a post-
er from my youth

And finally, Arlequein
by Bernard Buffet,
another souvenir

of my youth—

hungover | entered
Yolles Furniture Store going out of business
for ten dollars, | bought a framed print
a harlequin, sad, sitting, drinking alone.
It might have been better
had | brought home a mirror
many, many years ago.

61

Rhonda Melanson

The Herd Shook the Forest

till treetops dome less

and herd becomes murderer
of the sun and its sins.

The moon assumes its laurels
inches forward

its reflection-
pale, shadowy

shifting value
leaning to black.

| hear them applauding
this slow movement their grand overtures.

62

Back Then There Were Cups of Coffee

my dad's coffees
were the smokes
he gave up

Cups, new habit
for our little family
even me, aged ten.

After restaurant meals,
he'd order one last cup—
had to be hot

or he'd send it back.
We'd laugh at the memory
of him burning his tongue.

That last time he wandered off
we followed aroma of beans
to first Tim's, then McDonald's.

Bought him a cup
of familiarity.

The Home's coffee
too weak an elixir
to comfort confused.

Start a new habit—
drink juice from a straw.

63

Blood Memory

It’s in their genes now:
flasks, paddles, pill bottles
with screw off caps

stone hearts quarried

after the sixties scoop

pitched back into chemical valley
the memory of their blood
where white count

outnumbers their red

our radiation failed them.

64

ANDREAS GRIPP

65

The Beliveau Review stands in solidarity with

Black Lives Matter and against the oppression,
abuse, and exploitation of our sisters and
brothers which have been going on for centuries
right up to the present day. It’s critically
important to use the platforms we have to speak
out in opposition to injustice, hatred, and
violence—in this context perpetrated against the
Black community; and also against Indigenous
People (both in this country and around the
ie) a (¢) Pa od-v0) 0) (=o) Mmm @Xo) [016] oa -vo)e) (= [a 0) -1 8 a
People with Disabilities, Women, Children, and
members of the LGBTQIA2+ community.

66

Beliveau Review / Beliveau Books

editorial

Andreas Gripp

Carrie Lee Connel Donatien Beliveau
(in spirit)

CONTRIBUTORS

Brian J. Alvarado is a New York-based writer and performer. His work has
been featured in printed publications of: RiverCraft, Trailhead, Bay View
Literary Magazine, Gnashing Teeth, and DenimSkin, and online in: Squawk
Back, Contraposition, Open Door, Trouvaille Review, and 3Elements Review,
among others. He holds a BAin Creative Writing from Susquehanna
University. https://www.brianalvarado.com/

Frank Beltrano has written a poem and folded it into a paper airplane that
summer when men landed on the moon. More recently, he has had two
poems ride the London, Ontario buses, had a poem printed on a postcard,
had the same award winning poem printed on 1,000 posters. He has been
published in journals, in both Canada and the US, has read poetry in bars,
coffee shops, library basements and art galleries. A few years ago he erased
his way to second place in Geist magazine. A recent poem is forthcoming in
Rattle. And so it goes...

Carla M. Cherry is an African-American poet and a veteran English teacher.
Her poetry has appeared in publications such as Random Sample Review,
MemoryHouse, Bop Dead City, Synraesis, Anti-Heroin Chic, 433, and Raising
Mothers. Carla is studying for her M.F.A. in Creative Writing at the City
College of New York. She has written five books of poetry—her latest is
Stardust and Skin (iiPublishing 2020).

Joseph A. Farina is a retired lawyer in Sarnia, Ontario, Canada. Several of
his poems have been published in Quills Canadian Poetry Magazine,
Ascent, Subterranean Blue, Tower Poetry Magazine, Inscribed, The Windsor
Review, Boxcar Poetry Revue, and appears in the anthology, Sweet Lemons:
Writings with a Sicilian Accent, in the anthology, Witness, from Serengeti
Press and Tamaracks: Canadian Poetry for the 21st Century. He has had
poems published in the U.S. magazines Mobius, Pyramid Arts, Arabesques,
Fiele-Festa, Philedelphia Poets and Memoir, as well as in the Silver Birch
Press Me, at Seventeen Series. He has had two books of poetry published:
The Cancer Chronicles and The Ghosts of Water Street.

D.G. Foley is a Stratford-area visualist, scribbler, and is one of the editors of
Beliveau Review. Their new chapbook of poetry is ghosts & other poems
and is available from Beliveau Books.

Andreas Gripp is the editor of Beliveau Review. Their latest book of poetry
is The Last Milkman on Earth while their newest photo/art book is still and
unstill, both published by Beliveau Books. They live in Stratford, Ontario,
with their wife and two cats.

Penn Kemp has participated in Canadian cultural life for over 50 years,
writing, editing, and publishing poetry and plays. She has published 30
books of poetry, prose and drama and 10 CDs. Penn is the League’s 40th
Life Member and Spoken Word Artist (2015). Penn’s new collection, A Near
Memoir: new poems (Beliveau Books), launched on Earth Day, 2021.

See www.pennkemp.wordpress.com and www.pennkemp.weebly.com

Barun Mandal has an MFA in Painting from the University of Hyderabad in
India and has won a variety of awards and fellowships for his art. He lives in
Kadapa, Andhra Pradesh.

Cecilia Martinez is an award-winning self-taught artist from Jersey City,
New Jersey. She has learned how to manipulate different mediums through
patience and practice, trial and error. In the five years she's been in the art
scene, Cecilia has already had her work exhibited in more than 80 shows in
venues throughout the country, including the National Association of
Women Artists Gallery in New York City and the Augusta Savage Gallery at
the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Additionally, her work has been
featured in a segment on Al Jazeera TV, which reaches more than 30 million
viewers worldwide. Cecilia’s artwork is also regularly published in art
magazines and journals in the United States, United Kingdom and Europe.

Rhonda Melanson is a teacher and poet living in Sarnia, Ontario. She has
published a chapbook, gracenotes, and is a co-editor of the blog, Uproar.

An author and a father, Kushal Poddar edited the magazine Words
Surfacing, authored seven volumes of poetry including The Circus Came To
My Island, A Place For Your Ghost Animals, Eternity Restoration Project:
Selected and New Poems and Herding My Thoughts To The Slaughterhouse:
A Prequel. His works have been translated into ten languages. He is based
in Kolkata.

Sundress Best of the Net Nominee, Suzanne S. Rancourt, Abenaki/Huron
descent, has authored Billboard in the Clouds (Northwestern University
Press, received the Native Writers’ Circle of the Americas First Book
Award), murmurs at the gate (Unsolicited Press, 2019), and Old Stones,
New Roads (Main Street Rag Publishing, April 2021). She is a USMC and
Army Veteran with degrees in psychology, writing, and expressive arts
therapy. Widely published, please view her website’s publication
list: www.expressive-arts.com

Terry Watada is a Japanese Canadian writer living in Toronto and has 5
poetry collections in print. His 5th, "The Four Sufferings" (Mawenzi Book
Publishers) was released in late 2020. He has compiled a 6th. "Crows at
Sunset" was shortlisted for the Eyelands International Book Awards
(unpublished category, Athens Greece) in 2020.

70

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71

New from Beliveau Books

penn kemp

https://beliveaubooks.wixsite.com/home/books

New from Beliveau Books

https://beliveaubooks.wixsite.com/home/books

New from Beliveau Books

A digital anthology of poetry by a variety of writers that deals with finality, coda, and
epilogue, within the context of our place upon this planet. Poems that acknowledge
what has come before us, the drama of struggling to survive in the 2020s, and a look to
possible futures whether the outcomes may be positive, negative, or stasis in nature.

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Howie Goe
Katherine [S@O
Andreas Gripp “~~
Gregory Wm. Gunn ¥ ‘
Mark Hertzberger
1.B. Iskov
Roosevelt Jones
Laurinda Lind
Bruce McRae
Kenneth Pobo
Renée M. Sgroi
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John Tyndall
Jennifer Wenn
Anna Yin

*ISBN'978-1-927734-26-1

02/02/21
https://beliveaubooks.wixsite.com/home/books

New from Beliveau Books

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A curated selection of poetry from Afterthoughts magazine, which
was based in London, Ontario, and ran from 1994 to 2000.

Beryl Baigent
The Best of Afterthoughts Peter Baltensperger
- ~ Deanne Bayer
1994-2000: an anthology of poetry ier Bees
Jean Berrett
Jeff Bien
Lois Ann Carrier
Andrew Cook
Ruth Daigon
Shira Dentz
Jason Dickson
William Doreski
Vic Elias
Louis Gallo
Katherine L. Gordon
Daniel Green
John Grey
Mary Anne Griffiths
Chris Guiltinan
Gregory Wm. Gunn
Sarah Haden
Bernadette Higgins
Pamela Sweeney Jackson
Constance E. Kirk
M. Laska
Monika Lee
Lyn Lifshin
Claire Litton
Dan Lukiv
Jim Madden
John Monroe
Lee Moore
Sylvia Parusel
Ben Passikoff
Molly Peacock
Sherman Pearl
A) Purdy
Jack Rickard
Kenneth Salzmann
Hillel Schwartz
j K.V_ Skene
Beliveau Books _/ Mary Rudbeck Stanko
ISBN 978-1-927734-25-4 Gina Tabasso
a) Ay sy , Bob Vance
TA, Laeee P_A. Webb
ee? Fredrick Zydek

Autumn 2020
https://beliveaubooks.wixsite.com/home/books

New from Beliveau Books

: ghosts & other poems ff

https://beliveaubooks.wixsite.com/home/books

All 12 issues of Synaeresis can be easily read & downloaded at:
https://beliveaubooks.wixsite.com/home/magazines

Synaeresis

arts + poetry

All 12 issues of Synaeresis can be easily read & downloaded at:
https://beliveaubooks.wixsite.com/home/magazines

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All 12 issues of Synaeresis can be easily read & downloaded at:

https://beliveaubooks.wixsite.com/home/magazines

Issues of Beliveau Review can be easily read & downloaded at:
https://beliveaubooks.wixsite.com/home/magazines

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BELIVEAU REVIEW

SPRING 2021 ISSUE 4

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Issues of Beliveau Review can be easily read & downloaded at:
https://beliveaubooks.wixsite.com/home/magazines

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Beliveau Review
Call for Submissions

Beliveau Review is a free, digital journal, published quarterly,
showcasing Canadian, American, and International poetry, flash fiction,
visual art & photography. It is a continuation of Synaeresis: art + poetry.

At the present time, there is no payment available but there are no submission
or reading fees of any kind. The editorial staff is volunteer-oriented.
Contributors will be able to download a free PDF of the issue
they are in from the Beliveau Review website:

beliveaubooks.wixsite.com/home/ magazines

poetry (1 to 6 poems)
flash fiction (1 to 3 stories)
photography (1 to 6 photos)
visual art (1 to 6 works)

Please email your submission as a separate attachment (MS Word / jpg).
Please include a brief bio of yourself as well
in case your work is selected for publication.

Email address: beliveaubooks@gmail.com
Response time is usually one to five days.

WE ARE NOW OPEN YEAR-ROUND FOR SUBMISSIONS. NO DEADLINES.

There are no particular themes in Beliveau Review
other than exceptional writing and visual art.

The subject matter is open, though please don’t send in any work that is
derogatory to or demeans a person’s gender, orientation, race, ethnicity, faith, etc.
No graphic violence or pornography
(please note that nudity and pornography are not necessarily synonymous).
Please send only new and/or previously unpublished offerings
(We don’t regard social media sharing as previously published).

We welcome submissions from ALL poets & artists (though please keep in mind
the aforementioned), and we especially encourage writing from folks
who are BIPOC, LGBTQIA2+, Women, People with Disabilities,
and Individuals who have been marginalized.

Beliveau Review VII

Brian J. Alvarado

Frank Beltrano

Carla M. Cherry

Joseph A. Farina

D.G. Foley

Andreas Gripp

Penn Kemp

Barun Mandal

Cecilia Martinez

Rhonda Melanson

Kushal Poddar

Suzanne S. Rancourt
——- \ Terry Watada_ a

ISSN 2563-3619